Chapter Three:
The Ice Marshes
Shade’s hot breaths wafted up in puffs of steam as he pushed himself at a brisk pace through the freezing swamplands. The Ice Marshes were one of the few places most men assumed avoid in the civilized west. It was considered the cancer of the western plains and although it lay on the very doorstep of the capital, travelers kept to roads that wound far around it. Few roads passed through the Ice Marshes; most had sunken into the ever-settling bogs long ago. Shade passed by the rotted, grayed remains of old wagons, carts and wheels half-submerged in the frozen mud. This was a land that swallowed the few mounts dragged in by their foolish owners, giving the land a hungering, almost gluttonous reputation.
The assassin’s ever-alert eyes swept the gloomy landscape. He was always on his guard when passing through the Ice Marshes. The marshes stretched out in every direction forming a maze of twisting, muddy plateaus and hammocks bulging from swamps of frozen green water. Ice Reeds lined the banks and withered brown Duckweed lay encased in solid ice. Shriveled and bare Bald Cypress Trees cast frail skeletal forms over the foggy terrain, dripping with melting icicles. Danger could creep up on him at any instant and he was all too familiar with the rules of the hunt.
Shade was a predator and he had a profound respect for nature’s other great hunters. His keen Elven ears picked up a screeching sound in the distance, but he lowered his guard almost as soon as it had been roused. The screech was nothing but a high-pitched squeal of a Muckhog dying at the end of a Wilderman’s spear of that he was certain. He still could not bring himself to relax completely. Wildermen were the least of his worries here, beasts lay in wait and darker things stalked these swamps of which he dared not speak.
The wind moaned loudly in Shade’s ears. The merciless gust blew back his hair and bit into his flesh. He pulled his cloak about him, but wiped the cold sweat off his brow. The winter grew late. Most of the swamp water was still frozen over, but he had passed several pools where ice floes broke off and floated in the frigid waters. He could smell it. The reek of the swamps returned to torture his nostrils. He choked back the nauseating stench that wafted up from the thawing brown muck.
The rising temperatures had begun slowly turning the frozen mud flats into a sticky morass. Soft, wet spots of ground made a suction noise every time Shade lifted a boot. He had to fight to pull his boot from the icy sinkholes. He would have to be extra careful. Although the warm seasons were a much welcome change to the biting cold winters, the ice would be melting now and a simple misplaced step could send him plunging through the ice.
Shade wondered what other dangers the thawing swamps would awaken. He was always amazed every year he encountered another new species that tested his very will for survival. He thought about the giant Boring Worm and the Hydra he had killed the year before. He grinned in a smug confidence. Killing a powerful man hedged in by a host of bodyguards was far more satisfying than offing some lone commoner who had murdered his brother over drawing the short straw in his inheritance. Shade had coldly settled similar squabbles between brothers, between spouses and countless others, each a dull monotonous kill that held no meaning to the renowned assassin, but a few more gold pieces to line his already fat pockets.
Warlord Lewd would be a well-protected quarry making the assassin a number of fascinating enemies for years to come. The warlord would make a worthy adversary from what Shade had heard. Lewd’s victories in Karus Forest during the Thieves War were legendary in the criminal underworld. He singlehandedly united the forest’s many competing factions of night mortals and bandits under one banner. This incredible feat earned him the title warlord, but Lewd was not some ruthless tyrant. He was a diplomatic genius who had a way of winning over his rivals. The nickname, ‘The Sewer King’ was a poetic tribute to Lewd’s charismatic flamboyance, although the word on the streets was that Lewd never appreciated the artistry in the name. Executions inevitably followed.
Shade reasoned it likely that the warlord’s rise to power enabled him to stake a claim at the real crown jewel of the underworld—the Kurn sewers. That claim had paid off. Lewd now ruled the Kurn underground with an iron fist. Shade was making an enemy…a very, very dangerous enemy. The difficulty in getting to Warlord Lewd only proved to be more exhilarating.
The Dark Elf reminded himself he had been trained in the ranks of the Unseen, the deadliest assassins in all the world. It was no wonder no man, not even the mighty legions of Doljinaar, had ever penetrated the black forests of Jui-Sae. The Unseen lay in wait there, still and hidden as shadows among the trees. Shadow Magic shrouded them completely from sight. His people were the ‘sons of shadow,’ the Faelin as they were called in their own language.
Shade stopped in his tracks. He sensed danger. He studied several blocks of ice floating in a thawed pool. It was the middle block that caught his eye. The block was long and slender—fifteen feet in length and had scales—strange white scales and a pair of hungry yellow eyes. It was no block at all, but a Coldwater Crocodile. The assassin discerned the reptile’s long white teeth pressing against its thin leathery lips. The crocodile lay in wait in perfect stillness, a mere five paces away. Another step towards the water’s edge and he would be claimed by its powerful jaws.
Shade smirked in amusement, “Very clever, shadow hunter.”
The Coldwater Crocodile’s albino appearance was a product of its thick hide that grew only in wintertime and enabled it to survive the harsh winters. The coldblooded reptile shed its skin in late spring when it would show its true scale, a greenish brown. The croc’s chameleon-like skin blended masterfully into the seasons, which kept Shade on the tip of his toes when passing through these swamps. How humiliating it would be for the world’s most renowned assassin to meet his untimely end due to a careless step placed next to the jaws of another great hunter.
“Not today, shadow hunter,” he chided softly.
Shade trotted up another muddy bank taking great care to go around the creature and watched for more. He ducked under the low branches of a Baldcypress Tree and continued onward. He always thought of his old master back home when happening upon a Coldwater Crocodile. His master would have surely appreciated the cleverly camouflaged reptile. Master Sadora was the legendary Shadowlord of Jui-Sae, lord over all Unseen. Shade wondered if there ever was a creature under the sun as dangerous as Sadora.
Shade owed everything he knew to the Shadowlord. He would have never risen to such prominence without his old master’s grisly training. Shade had worked his way into Sadora’s favor and became the Shadowlord’s star pupil. Sadora taught him the deepest mysteries of the shadow arts, attuning his every reflex to the ways of stealth and death. Lord Sadora had molded Shade into the perfect killing machine he was today, but his master’s dark teaching was the straw that eventually drove him away.
Shade was an assassin with a few loose principles. No women, no children, unless it was absolutely necessary, but Sadora was a merciless killer. The Shadowlord took pleasure in the art of murder especially the weak. Sadora had a way of doing away with political rivals and their entire families, though nothing could ever be proved. Shade was certain, had he stayed in Jui-Sae, he would have remained a part of the Shadowlord’s secret circle of Unseen and would have continued to carry out such ruthless acts of brutality.